Fall Brooks

The turning, colorful season was an open invitation to spend a couple of days among the mountain streams of northern Pennsylvania. The male brook trout are in spawning hue, as beautiful as any wild fish can be, and readily accepted my rambling catch-and-release activity in the big creek’s headwaters. There my favorite streams felt wild, secluded, but accessible thanks to hiking trails and old abandoned railbeds.

I quickly lost count of all the hungry brookies that I saw, and one memorable catch was a wild brown that initially rose without success to my dry fly. Resting the fish, now hiding in some shadowy niche, I switched my offering to a bead-head nymph, and that did the trick. Throughout the pleasant hours fishing carefully in my solitude, the 6’8″ glass rod (with a shortened leader and a 3X tippet) worked its magic for a sense of soul rejuvenation.

Here are the first two stanzas of my poem called “Fishing” that appeared in THE WILD TROUT, a chapbook published in 1989 and 1991;

The current spreads a coolness over thighs.

With nerves taut, abandoned to the moment,

I react to contrary motions– striking

to the shadow of a passing kingfisher,

to a leaf-flash, water’s sudden tugging…

Learning to perceive the hidden,

I cast for clues among the resting fish,

over stonefly nymph dislodged, perhaps

to relive that first catch long ago….

So, thanks to all the squaretails, all the wild fish, all the beauty of an autumn day that draws us toward appreciation of the finer things in outdoor life, the music of the spheres, the pull of the line, the summoned in a timeless flow.